Saturday, 25 July 2015

Behind God's Back

When
writing my blog on Dragan Andjelic, I came across this photo of Anne Aylor and me standing in front of his installation at the Pavarotti Music
Centre. She is wearing her white coat having
just come out of her busy treatment room where she practised
acupuncture during her nine-month stay in
Mostar.Anne
had originally come to
Bosnia Hercegovinaat
the tail-end of
the war in the
summer
of
1994
and had written up her experiences in an article submitted
to The New
Republic
with the title, “Behind God's Back”. On her
journey
there she
wrote
about a
surreal traffic jam that had been caused by two toppled vehicles.
“When the road has been cleared and we are given permission to
continue our journey, we see what has caused the delay: two
overturned container lorries full of pigs. The ones that are alive
are being hosed down by
soldiers.
What is eerie is that the animals are completely silent. They are
traumatised, dead or dying in
the 40 degree
heat.
I wonder if it is the first time in history that an
army has been deployed to help animals on their way to slaughter. We
pass the
containers
and see dozens of UN vehicles facing the other way. It has been seven
hours since the accident and these drivers will be here for hours
more. Seeing our War Child sticker, one of them waves at me. I ask
him if he speaks English so I can tell him what is causing the delay.
He shakes his head, says that he is German. ‘Schwein,’
I say, the only word I can remember from my high-school German, and
thumb in the direction of
the overturned
lorries.”
A
year later, War Child released the Helpalbum with contributions
from more
than 20 artists including Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Sinéad O’Connor,
Paul McCartney and Portishead. It
made
the charity millions. The
income from the album was used to provide artificial limbs for
wounded children, food and clothing to orphanages, funding for school
meals, support for a mobile medical clinic, the supply of premature
baby units, even funding for mine clearance programmes. It
was at this time that Linda McCartney
heard
about Anne's article and
asked to read “Behind
God's Back”.
Perhaps
that was why she decided
to donate
22 tonnes of veggie burgers to War Child to
be distributed
in Bosnia. You
can read more about Anne's
work in Bosnia
in Left Field.